Welcome the AP Nanny!

Looks like the Autopilot Nanny has arrived. With the government heavily involved in the approval and design of autonomous vehicles it looks like it's going to be hard for Tesla to keep pushing the envelope.

"Vehicle performance guidance for manufacturers, developers, and other organizations outlining a 15 point “Safety Assessment” for the safe design, development, testing, and deployment of highly automated vehicles, including a request that automakers sign and submit this safety assessment to certify that their vehicles are ready for public roads."

"Current regulatory tools that National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) can use to aid the safe development of automated vehicles, such as interpreting current rules to allow for appropriate flexibility in design, providing limited exemptions to allow for testing of nontraditional vehicle designs, and ensuring that unsafe automated vehicles are removed from the road."

"In particular, it emphasizes that semi-automated driving systems – ones in which the human continues to monitor the driving environment and perform some of the driving task – that fail to adequately account for the possibility that a distracted or inattentive driver-occupant might fail to retake control of the vehicle in a safety-critical situation may be defined as an unreasonable risk to safety and subject to recall."

I was worried when I first heard about this, but now I'm optimistic. Maybe it's premature to comment, but I see this as potentially good for Tesla and for customers. The assessment covers "safe design, development, testing, and deployment of highly automated vehicles, including a request that automakers sign and submit this safety assessment to certify that their vehicles are ready for public roads." The way that's phrased, it sounds like they're asking automakers to self-regulate, at least initially. They're asked to describe how they're addressing each of the safety areas. That doesn't sound too onerous: they already do it in the owners manual. They may find themselves in the soup if they do a bad job at that. But that's good.

Tesla can negotiate whatever new regulations arise with a single federal regulator, instead of bickering with 50 states. That's good.

The NHTSA gets a free hand "interpreting current rules to allow for appropriate flexibility in design, providing limited exemptions to allow for testing of nontraditional vehicle designs". That sounds promising too.

Tesla drivers may not like the nanny, but in many ways we are directly contributing to her arrival. Some of the foolish antics publicly posted combined with avoidable tragic events, bragging rights etc create the headlines the masses glob on to. Can't blame Tesla for this......perhaps we'll learn to responsibly control our own fate, before we lose even more independent control.

The part of this that people are missing (or ignoring) is this (emphasis mine):

"In particular, it emphasizes that semi-automated driving systems – ones in which the human continues to monitor the driving environment and perform some of the driving task – that fail to adequately account for the possibility that a distracted or inattentive driver-occupant might fail to retake control of the vehicle in a safety-critical situationmay be defined as an unreasonable risk to safety and subject to recall."

Now let's be real, here: what manufacturers field cars that fit that description? Which have had accidents that clearly exemplify the sort of failure mentioned as indicative of unreasonable safety risk?

The answer is pretty obvious.

My sense is this is a bigger deal than people are taking it to be. The regulators are now involved and they are signaling that there is at least the risk that they will consider AP as it stands to be unsafe. And if so, they are asserting their authority to remove those vehicles from the road. That's not minor stuff.

Well.. now, they will need to treat tesla like the other, so mercedes etc would need to apply no? Staying in the same league, i would say that if a strong action is directed angainst tesla they should completely disable the other systems since they behave a lot more badly..

Looks like the Autopilot Nanny has arrived. With the government heavily involved in the approval and design of autonomous vehicles it looks like it's going to be hard for Tesla to keep pushing the envelope.
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It was bound to happen. And overall it's a good thing. Without that there, there is no set of standard that automakers can apply to be deemed compliant. And without standards we have nothing less than a madhouse of lawyers suing everybody.

I'm always a little worried when the Feds make changes to "protect" us. So often this results in corruption, over-reaching regulations, politics and favors. I will wait until they release all info but they better not think of taking away my AP!

When I think about fed requirements/regulations for air bags, seat-belts, crash bumpers, et al. and some corporate attempts to undermine those key features and/or short change the customer on safety, I'm feeling better stoked about the future of fully autonomous vehicles. Can't imagine Tesla is opposed to safety regulatory authorities unlike Ford, GM, Honda and the fools that brought us the Takata "airbags."

Unlike electric vehicles, autonomous driving is tech just about every car maker, and some non-car makers, are pursuing aggressively. Many car makers consider their future depends on bringing autonomous tech to market.

Tesla is a bit ahead of most of the pack, but not by much and the entire pack wants it to happen ASAP. The NHTSA wants to ensure safety, but they also have every car maker in the world, including three big ones based in the US pushing back if they start putting rules in place that are outside the realm of possibility.

I think what the NHTSA wants to do is come up with standards everyone follows. Eventually the autonomous tech from every car maker is going to have to work together in harmony. It will hurt the long term adoption of autonomous tech if the market becomes balkanized with many competing technologies that can't work together.

".. manufacturers and other entities should place significant emphasis on assessing the risk of driver complacency and misuse of Level 2 systems, and develop effective countermeasures to assist drivers in properly using the system as the manufacturer expects"

"However, limiting the uses of automated functions in an L2 vehicle to the IODD, to the extent practical, should reduce the likelihood of such systems encountering circumstances they may not be able to handle. Further, limiting the uses of the system when drivers are not performing what is expected of them should lower the likelihood of an automation system failure occurring when the human driver is not sufficiently attentive."

It's great that the federal government is stepping in to streamline approval and regulations for HAVs, but since AP as we currently know it doesn't qualify as a HAV it looks like the hammer is coming down with regards to L2 driving. I'm sure Tesla would not have been able to release v7 of AP had this policy been in place last year.

I'm not sure it will be worth it for Tesla to spend their resources incrementally improving L2 driving from this point forward.. Any new hardware coming down the line needs to achieve L3.

The part of this that people are missing (or ignoring) is this (emphasis mine):

"In particular, it emphasizes that semi-automated driving systems – ones in which the human continues to monitor the driving environment and perform some of the driving task – that fail to adequately account for the possibility that a distracted or inattentive driver-occupant might fail to retake control of the vehicle in a safety-critical situationmay be defined as an unreasonable risk to safety and subject to recall."

Now let's be real, here: what manufacturers field cars that fit that description? Which have had accidents that clearly exemplify the sort of failure mentioned as indicative of unreasonable safety risk?

The answer is pretty obvious.

My sense is this is a bigger deal than people are taking it to be. The regulators are now involved and they are signaling that there is at least the risk that they will consider AP as it stands to be unsafe. And if so, they are asserting their authority to remove those vehicles from the road. That's not minor stuff.

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Any cruise control system could reasonably be considered a semi autonomous driving system. I don't think there is a single cruise control enabled car that has a means to detect driver inattention so if they intend to act on what they wrote they're going to recall nearly every car on the road. Except they'll make an exception for cruise despite the many fatal accidents where it was in use.

Oh geez I had to stop watching, but yes, that is what I meant so thanks for posting it.

But I must say I had what I sincerely hesitate to call a "Josh moment" on my recent road trip, in a long stretch of straight highway with nobody else in sight. I got lulled, if only for a moment. Perhaps a nag a minute in these circumstances is not such a travesty, if only to remind you of the importance of paying attention. We shall see, 8.0 is installing on my Model S right now...